Posts Tagged ‘practice’

My brother Aaron gave me a gift certificate to the craft store for Christmas and I spent it on fabric and patterns. I really want to take the time to learn all about following a pattern and making clothes.

This skirt is one of my first goes and while I do like it…there are a few lessons from it!

My zippers need some help.

My hem is too obvious. There has to be a better way!

The leather bit was not a part of the pattern and it was a bit ambitious for me to make things up before I had the hang of things. This is actually the second try on that. The first leather band was a bit tight so I managed to make a second with the scraps. Leather…as I should have guessed…is also not all that easy to sew with. This one fits better, and I am happy with the buttons but tearing the band off and replacing it with a slightly larger one somewhat messed up my pleats in the front. They’re not unbearable but they’re not as sharp and neat as I would like.

All and all, I have to say for a first try it’s not bad. Its wearable and I do like the look of it. There is another skirt I’ll post soon and hopefully I can really get into making clothes! I think my next project will be an off white or cream button down to go with this 🙂

The weekend turned out a bit busy, and I ended up having some short notice design work, but today I finished my first batch of camera bags. Here is a sneak peek of what you can expect to find in the etsy store this week! Tomorrow I’ll start taking my product photos and get these available to you.

In addition to finishing the bags, this afternoon I whipped up my last “practice” coloring book. I had ordered a pattern on etsy from jcasa, although I’ve decided to stick with my original. I will thank jcasa for some excellent tips on how to put it all together. I’ve since added to mine a layer of felt for rigidity. Jcasa‘s pattern featured a trifold setup, like a brochure, and used an elastic loop closure with a button. It also has pockets to hold pads of paper.

I decided my original set up worked best to hold folded coloring book pages with a strand of ribbon. I also like the flap to protect the pages from the crayons. The larger size, as my dad suggested, was easier for little kids to draw on, and also lends itself to being framed after being colored. I’m also keeping with the cardboard backing in the book that will make it easier to color in, but I’ve found a much cleaner way of inserting it and have stopped trying to sew around it.

I’ve also abandoned the button closure. I was worried that the loop and button was difficult for little kids to work, and might suffer wear and tear after lots of use. Velcro will also be easier on me for making stacks at a time. I like the creative touch the buttons add to the cover though, so if they see a return it will be more cosmetic and velcro will still function as the closure.

On this one I used velcro but didnt feel it needed a button…instead i made the flap wavy to match the nautical theme.

also, if you can see them on this photo…there are blue lines drawn in to mark seams…they’ll disappear!

I’d also like to make the crayon pockets a little longer to hold them more securely.

I nabbed this cute pattern for a camera bag wristlet. The designer was using some cute prints for hers but I thought it would be more fun to turn it into an evening bag. I can’t think of how often I get all dressed up and can’t cram my camera into my evening bag! I think a lot of ladies would be interested in disguising their camera in a cute wristlet like this…

The bag has a great little pocket on the back to hold ID, cards and cash, and it is held shut by the wristlet straps.

The design overall is very nice but there are several things I’d like to change. For one, its much too small! I can’t fit any of my cannon point and shoots in there. The camera pictured here is an itty bitty National Geographic give-away camera we had laying around. Not only would I like to accommodate slightly larger cameras, but if the idea is to serve as an evening camera bag, it’d be nice if other evening-out essentials could tuck in as well.

Second, I think I’d like to add in a piece of cord so you could throw it over your shoulder if you like. The kind that can be easily tucked into the bag if you’d still like to use it as a wristlet.

Well, this is my project for today, toying with the pattern to make it suit my needs! Let me know what you think…especially the camera toting ladies 🙂

My first product will be a custom coloring book in a beautiful little stitched book. My original is a birthday gift for my niece Riley. Its made out of old pants and dresses and filled with photos from our recent trip to Cape May NJ for her to color in. It will be so fun to see what creative twist she puts on our memories 🙂

I like the hand stitching, although it isn’t very practical for mass production.

The beading is an extra touch as well… it is my niece after all.

This is my beautiful niece Riley, and I hope she enjoys her coloring book. I imagine there is a lot of appeal for parents to see how their children remember events. It could be an annual gift to give a custom coloring book full of the year in photos.

For my second try and building a pattern I again resorted to cutting up old cloths and learned a valuable lesson! Trial and error will get me there…and one error is using stretchy t-shirts. While I wanted my bright red stitching to show, pulling and stretching the fabric over the cardboard frame caused a lot of stretching and warping in the seams.

Positives for this experiment? Well the colors and patterns were fun to work with, but more importantly the larger size allows for 5×7 size coloring book pages. That means parents can frame their favorite works of art easily!

Its not practical for pencils, but this larger size will hold LOTS of crayons too. And the more color the better!

Today I get the joy of picking out and ordering fabrics, which should be pretty enjoyable! I’ll let you know what goodies come in the mail 🙂